12 ms·

Pesticide residues could negate the health benefits of fruits and vegetables

171 points by rq1 4y ago

kurupt213 4y ago
The purpose of pesticides is to negate the health effects of famine. Everyone has lost perspective. There are billions of people that need to eat every day.
pgodzin 4y ago
Which fruits and vegetables are low and high in pesticide residue?
- symby 4y ago
  Organic FV are low in pesticide residue. Conventional FV are high.
  - pgodzin 4y ago
    Lot of comments here mention pesticide use in organic FV as well, just not synthetic pesticides. Are there any distinctions within organic and conventional of fruits and vegetables that have low pesticide use regardless of organic or not?
    - lathyrus_long 4y ago
      I've seen fruit marked as "IPM" in my local grocery store. That refers to integrated pest management, a general philosophy of controlling pests through understanding of their physiology, behavior, and interaction with the artificially-managed ecosystem, sometimes using synthetic chemical pesticides but in the smallest quantities that achieve the desired effect. http://ipm.ucanr.edu/ http://ipm.ucanr.edu/ I don't believe use of the term is regulated, though. So in practice that may just be a nicer-sounding synonym for "conventional".
      - ldiracdelta 4y ago
        Unless the farmer is a moron, IPM is how most farmers try to use pesticides. Pesticides and chemical applications can be very expensive. Farmers try to use the least possible amount they can for purely economic reasons. My wife's grandfather was using IPM back in the 70s. Farming is competitive. If your costs are too high, you eventually go bankrupt during bad years. For the most part IPM is the rule, not the exception. Purely limited by the farmer's ability to understand pest cycles.
        lathyrus_long 4y ago
        A matter of degree, maybe. Certainly there's a degree of understanding that's cheaper than just blind heavy spraying, and that any grower would thus be foolish not to obtain. I've often seen "IPM" used to refer to systems that went beyond that though, incurring higher cost for lower ecological impact. For example, the guidelines linked below note explicitly that > Practices contained in this protocol are considerably more expensive than conventional programs that rely on highly toxic pesticides. https://ipminstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Red-Tomato-Core-Eco-Protocol-2022-v3_1-.pdf https://ipminstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Red-Toma... https://ipminstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Red-Tomato-Eco-Apple-Supplement-2022-v3_2-.pdf https://ipminstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Red-Toma... I think my supermarket apples were just plain "IPM" though, not a specific set of guidelines like that. Those guidelines seem like a tough sell overall, hard to succinctly explain the benefits to the average consumer.
        ldiracdelta 4y ago
        Conventional IPM programs use more toxic, but muuuch less volume of pesticides. Organic programs user "better" pesticides, but much much more. Which is better? We'll, it depends on how fast those pesticides break down and what those degraded molecules are. It depends on how much volume is applied to the produce. It depends on if it accumulates in the flesh of the produce. What if a pesticide outrageously lethal to humans, but breaks down in 2 days and you only apply it in the first 25% of the produce growing window? Which is worse? 400 lbs of feathers accumulating on your chest at 100 lbs/week for 4 weeks or 400 lbs of steel on your chest applied once. Silly metaphor, but the answer to incredibly difficult system problems is really "it depends". Conventional vs organic is not clear cut.
treme 4y ago
ultrasonic washer are by far the best way to wash fruits & veges of these things, in Korea ultrasonic washer-sinks are picking up in popularity. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-JZkiGigDw&t=261s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-JZkiGigDw&t=261s research citation https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4688301/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4688301/
- DoingIsLearning 4y ago
  Maybe a stupid question but this removes surface pesticide residue, is there any evidence of how much that is percentage wise versus 'absorbed' pesticide inside the fruit?
- hetspookjee 4y ago
  It makes me sad that we need ultrasonic washers for fruit and vegetables.
  - nemo44x 4y ago
    We don’t spray pesticides on fruit to make people sad. Without them then fruit would be inaccessible to many people.
    - tuyiown 4y ago
      > Without them then fruit would be inaccessible to many people. This is just a lucky side effect, I'm 100% sure that main goal is for the pesticides industry just take their cut on the producers margin. By growing those margins, sure, but it's not something that should be forgotten.
      - biorach 4y ago
        No, the main goal of the pesticides industry is to supply chemicals that kill of various pests (insects, fungi etc) that would otherwise destroy a significant proportion of the harvest. Without these pesticides food would be significantly more expensive and less accessible to many people. I agree that we should talk about moving away from chemical dependent farming but we need to be aware of the full picture in order to avoid glib solutions.
Pet_Ant 4y ago
Doesn't say that they controlled for organic fruit (ie low pesticide) being more likely to be chosen by people who are already heath conscious.
- JamesBarney 4y ago
  And who have more disposable income.
- kickout 4y ago
  Absolutely nothing about organic production implies less pesticide. Opposite is true actually.
  - wlll 4y ago
    I'm curious, can you link to any details of this?
    - kickout 4y ago
      Pesticide use in conventional system can use synthetic chemistries whereas organic can only use 'natural' formulations. Thus, it is extremely difficult to compare apples to apples and most studies are flawed. Because the 'natural' formulation aren't as effective (usually), this needs to higher nominal rates. Again, it's very dicey comparison. I'm not advocating convention > organic, but feel the need to pushback on people that think organic > conventional
    - kickout 4y ago
      This article (if read completely) highlights the extreme lack of data on this subject and mostly does a good job explaining how each metric is 'loaded' (toxicity, nominal application amounts, off-target movements, etc.) This is a very grey subject and it should be debated as such. ETA: link, https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-25502-w https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-25502-w
  - toshk 4y ago
    Except a lot of data, and stricter rules See: https://research.wur.nl/en/publications/cocktails-of-pesticide-residues-in-conventional-and-organic-farmi#:~:text=Organic%20soils%20presented%2070%E2%80%9390,soil%20biota%20and%20soil%20health https://research.wur.nl/en/publications/cocktails-of-pestici....
DecentAI 4y ago
Can anyone provide a hopeful development update as to what efforts if any are underway in the farming industry to genuinely move past herbicides and pesticides of this kind?
- treme 4y ago
  https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2021/11/02/self-driving-farm-robot-uses-lasers-to-kill-100000-weeds-an-hour-saving-land-and-farmers-from-toxic-herbicides/?sh=6106864e4070 https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2021/11/02/self-dr... pew pew
- biorach 4y ago
  Organic farming exists. Consumers can move past herbicides and pesticides by paying more (sometimes much more) for their food, and cooking more from scratch. Of course this is easy for wealthy first-world dwellers. Less so for low income families in places with less diverse supply chains. Organic farming has lower yields (those pests otherwise killed off by the pesticides end up eating a lot of the produce) and is more labour intensive - which explains the higher cost. Additionally there is more to the picture than farmers and consumers. In most first-world countries the large retailers (Walmart is famously the most ruthless here) mercilessly squeeze suppliers (distributors and large farmers) to supply the most produce at the lowest price. This pushes farms into consolidation and industrial production - i.e. very large scale mono-culture farming heavily dependent on chemicals. The very low cost food that we see in our supermarkets has the effect of making orgainic produce look overpriced by comparison - often consumers these days view organic as a luxury item. Governments too have grant-aided and subsidized farms in a way that often incentivizes "high-tech" farming. I could go on...
  - fsflover 4y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_farming#Nutrient_leaching https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_farming#Nutrient_leach... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_farming#Food_quality_and_safety https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_farming#Food_quality_a...
  - 4y ago
atty 4y ago
Unless I missed something, it’s completely self reported and only following people working in healthcare. This is not a very convincing result.
- minsc_and_boo 4y ago
  The cohorts are huge (120,000+ people) and they controlled for a number of other factors in the analysis, so I don't think sample error is here to blame for why they observed high-pesticide fruits/veggies having less health benefits than low-pesticide fruits/veggies.
  - lathyrus_long 4y ago
    The p values are small enough that the correlation seems likely to be real, even after lots of dredging through that dataset. I'm less sure about the causality, though. It's also possible they've just discovered that richer people (a) live longer, and (b) like organic produce. They controlled for various factors (note 1 on table 2), but none that seem like usefully strong proxies for income or wealth.
    - minsc_and_boo 4y ago
      The study doesn't seem to claim causality, just that this is their second study showing the same results, and that further study is needed. I'm not sure how controlling for income/wealth would matter, given that the study is all nurses and they control by ethnicity.
      - lathyrus_long 4y ago
        Surely this relationship is noteworthy only to the extent it's potentially a causality? The authors are careful not to make explicit claims, but most discussion here is about that possibility. The title of this HN submission is too ("could negate"), though the title of the paper itself is more cautious. After more carefully reading the paper, I think the premise of my original comment was completely wrong though. The study apparently had no information on whether the participants were eating conventional or organic produce. Rather, they categorized by type of fruit or vegetable, converting the average results of tests for residues to a score from 0 (best) to 6 (worst) with a somewhat arbitrary heuristic. For example, grapefruit scored 0, and spinach scored 6. That eliminates the spurious correlation I speculated about, though others may exist; it would be interesting to know which specific fruits and vegetables accounted for most of the effect. That heuristic also increases the risk of data dredging; I wonder how many versions they tried before they got their result. As to the residues, it seems they considered all pesticides equally, even though some are strongly suspected to be much more dangerous than others. It would be interesting to repeat the analysis considering only residues of those suspected to be most (or least) dangerous, to see if their effect gets bigger (or smaller).
jtdev 4y ago
newsclues 4y ago
I have food allergies and have a very strict diet. Recently I had some issues with dry scalp, doctors weren’t helpful to diagnose the root cause, and I traced it to non organic carrots that removed or replaced by organic ones caused the symptoms to return. I can’t buy cheap bulk carrots, but organic ones are fine. This sounds insane but I’m starting to think the food supply isn’t as safe as we think.
- sebleon 4y ago
  Very interesting, how did you figure out carrots were the issue?
  - newsclues 4y ago
    Substitution. Changed to organic/no carrots, symptoms went away, ate cheap carrots again, boom issues returned.
kaylz 4y ago
This is part of the reason I really want to move out of the U.S. Other countries are much more strict with what they allow in their food. I understand that I can pay more for organic produce and meat, but for a supposedly first-world country, you'd think decent produce would be a given.
- nostromo 4y ago
  So you'd rather everyone pay more for food based on your personal preferences? Even though there's a lot of evidence that these foods are entirely safe...
  - switchbak 4y ago
    He said he wanted to move somewhere else, I don't see where he's trying to force his preferences on others.
  - Etheryte 4y ago
    This is a pure strawman argument, the parent comment said none of those things. Regarding entirely safe, this is a comment thread on a study that says they're not entirely safe.
  - ceejayoz 4y ago
    > So you'd rather everyone pay more for food based on your personal preferences? The counterpoint here is "so you'd rather everyone pay more for health care decades from now to save a few bucks on groceries now?" > Even though there's a lot of evidence that these foods are entirely safe... The US requirement for a lot of chemicals is "generally recognized as safe", which, in practice, means "we don't know that it's not safe yet". When we find something's unsafe, industry frequently switches to something similar that's still GRAS (because no one's been using it) but likely has the same issues. Europe takes a stricter approach. Example: BPA in plastics, which has now been replaced with BPS and BPF.
  - toshk 4y ago
    Except it isn't. Already lots of diseases linked to pesticides. Will only be more in the years to come. It's clear that at least farmers and also people living in pesticides ridden areas suffer many diseases, for instance Parkinson: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6176703/#:~:text=Pesticide%20exposed%20workers%20have%20been,pesticides%20cause%20serious%20health%20hazards https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6176703/#:~:tex.... The only assumption is is that in low doses pesticides are not harmful, but there is no deep knowledge of years and years of low dose pesticide exposure. And those limits might differ based upon weight, gender, age, genetics and luck. But there are also other risks. For instance with Strawberries they might have limits of one pesticide, but they max out different ones, so you get a cocktail of chemicals that used together exceeds the allowed limits of one.
arisAlexis 4y ago
I'm stupid and don't understand high pesticide with low pesticide. So those who eat a lot are good and those who eat a little are not? Also there is a sentence saying that people that don't smoke are more active have lower bmi have hypercholesterolemia. Is something off or I just can't read Sci studied anymore?
MikeDelta 4y ago
I read a while ago about leek that was stolen while it was still toxic from the pesticides. Apparently the leeks needed some more weeks for the toxins to flush through. Haven't been able to find some other info about this process. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/wbna9704486 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/wbna9704486
- ac29 4y ago
  For leeks to have a white portion of the stem (usually the part that is eaten), you have to bury part of it underground or it turns green. Presumably they use something like a soil fumigant to prevent spoilage of this underground part. Pretty nasty stuff if it actually renders the plant toxic for 6 weeks.
smm11 4y ago
I'm pretty sure wild boar is the best thing out there right now.
dukeofdoom 4y ago
I'm no fan of communism, but one thing I think communism did better is that allotment gardens and and small cottage gardens where much more attainable under communism for poor people. So even poor people could grow their own food. I live in Ontario where the price of real estate is bonkers. If you own land, you can't even build a shed without there being a main building. And you can't build anything under 800 sqft. The high property taxes and real estate prices make it basically unaffordable for most people. I planted a few fruit trees in my backyard, but so far only squirrels benefit.
- ceejayoz 4y ago
  Germany and Switzerland have allotment gardens today; communism isn't required.
  - malfist 4y ago
    In the US we had victory gardens during times of war rationing. I personally grow one still today, but not everyone has the space, time and inclination to learn how to grow plants and preserve a harvest.
    - dukeofdoom 4y ago
      Just curious, what method do you use to protect against squirrels? They're kind of crazy here, will eat everything. I had one chew through a plastic bird feeder to get at the seeds.
      - malfist 4y ago
        I have a fence, and dogs are often in the backyard. Squirrels don't really bother most of what I grow anyway since they're mostly started indoors and transplanted.
    - jabl 4y ago
      I saw some documentary on the TV about the common food people ate in various decades in the UK, and there they said that some time after WWII when rationing was ended people were so dead tired of their victory gardens that most of them were replaced with lawns or flowers in just a few short years.
xyst 4y ago
I can't wait until vertical farming becomes cheap enough to overtake traditional farming methods. Pesticide use will be a thing of the past while all of our food is grown locally in controlled environments. Optimizing for food taste instead of pesticide or weather resistance. Not to mention the reduced carbon footprint (due to transportation), significant decrease in water usage, and increased efficiency.
- kickout 4y ago
  you think controlled environments don't use chemicals to control pests??? They do, and they use them a lot, because controlling pests and pathogens is physically hard no matter how hard you try. Vertical farming is way, way more energy intensive than regular outdoor based farming for the simple reason is outdoor farming can use the sun. That sole fact basically kills vertical farming for all but the highest of margin food (spices, some vegetables). When we get cheap energy, vertical farming will take off. Not before.
  - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
    Controlled environments, are, well, erm, controlled, so something like a hydroponic greenhouse normally wouldn't use pesticides at all - pests should not be getting in at all. If the greenhouse uses normal soil then ofcourse it's not totally isolated, but still i'd expect them to use less
    - kickout 4y ago
      Having spent alot of time in controlled environments, the name is misleading. These are chip making clean facilities. I'd guess >99% of CE facilities have to spray pesticides. Thrips, white flies, and other insects are _very_ common. ETA: to add info for you. CE usually implies the control is from inputs (water, nutrients, light) not physical access.
    - lathyrus_long 4y ago
      I've heard of facilities with short crop cycles (greens, herbs, etc.) running totally bug-free with zero pesticides, with air showers at the entrance and careful segregation so that one introduction doesn't ruin their whole crop, etc. I don't think that's common, though. There's usually bugs. It's common to deliberately introduce predatory insects, which control the pests in the same way as in nature, with the additional benefit that they can't fly away if the pest population gets too low. Chemical pesticides are also widely used, both organic and non-organic. Hydroponic crops are especially vulnerable to sucking pests (aphids, whiteflies, etc.), because of the large amounts of tender new growth. Without controls or natural predators, their population can just explode, much worse than anything you'd get outdoors.
MrYellowP 4y ago
As an Austrian I would never touch the food that comes out of the US. Never. The title alone makes me raise an eyebrow, because from my perspective this isn't just obvious, but well known.
- teknopaul 4y ago
  The title of this is plain ridiculous. The primary "health benefit" of eating food is that you dont die of hunger. Are all american vegitairians dead ;) Or do people live of meat and petrolchemicals?
- fomine3 4y ago
  US citizens may eat much foods made in US everyday, but outside US citizens may not. I'll care this if I live US, but I don't much care as a non-US resident, because consumption is low. Amount is important factor.
samatman 4y ago
Anxiety could also negate the health benefits of not eating pesticides.
pfdietz 4y ago
The battle of the putatives.
andai 4y ago
Another fun headline from a while back: jogging near roads negates the benefits of the exercise.
fsckboy 4y ago
how are we supposed to parse this?: "High-pesticide-residue FV intake was unrelated whereas low-pesticide residue FV intake was inversely related to all-cause mortality" high pesticide consumption was unrelated (so had no effect on mortality), while low pesticide intake had inverse relation to mortality (low pesticide = high mortality)?
- nikkwong 4y ago
  Inversely related to mortality. I.e low pesticide intake reduced morality.
  - xenator 4y ago
    I'm still confused. Morality or mortality?
    - kgr 4y ago
      If you eat low-pesticide fruits and vegetables, you're less likely to die. If you eat high-pesticide fruits and vegetables, your chances of dying are unaffected, which is surprising because you would expect that increased fruit and vegetable consumption would decrease your chances of dying. So, it seems that the potential health benefits of eating fruits and vegetables is negated if they contain high levels of pesticide.
- DoingIsLearning 4y ago
  The expectation is that FV consumption decreases all cause mortality. This agrees with the observation that low-pesticide residue FV intake was inversely related to all-cause mortality. If High-pesticide-residue FV intake was unrelated to all cause mortality it could mean that there is a detrimental effect in High-pesticide-residue FV that offsets the expected benefit of FV.
codeflow2202 4y ago
Combine this article with the other one about contamination of fruits and vegetables in Europe and we have a pretty bad picture of the situation: European citizens have been exposed to a dramatic rise in the frequency and intensity of residues of the most toxic pesticides on fruits and vegetables sold in the EU. This report and its primary conclusion contradict official claims that toxic pesticides use is declining and that food residue levels are under control. This report also exposes a complete failure by Member States and the European Commission to implement EU Regulation and protect consumers. https://www.pan-europe.info/sites/pan-europe.info/files/public/resources/reports/CfSResidueReport.pdf https://www.pan-europe.info/sites/pan-europe.info/files/publ...
fuzzfactor 4y ago
Hot running water is actually quite effective. Some solid and oily toxins are considered technically insoluble in water since so few milligrams will dissolve in a liter. Unlike familiar things that are obviously soluble in grams like salt or sugar. Now the pesticides are developed to be highly toxic in milligram amounts, but the advantage is that there is likely only to be a few milligrams on the farm produce that needs to be washed off. Solubility is a function of solvent temperature and volume, so the hotter and the greater number of liters or gallons, often astronomically more of an "insoluble" material can be taken up into a solvent compared to the very minuscule amount soluble when cold. Naturally thorough flushing and/or repeated rinsing with fresh hot solvent will be more effective than a single bath, since the first bath sees the highest concentration of solute. Which can re-deposit upon evaporation. I'm sure people have not thought it was that bad and have occasionally eaten something like an unwashed grape or strawberry, or even quite a number of them whether focusing much awareness on it or not. Take fruit from that same batch and run it under good amounts of hot water and see if you can taste the difference too. Carefully using an appropriate vegetable brush is a good idea as well.
- gameswithgo 4y ago

171 points by rq1 4y ago

The purpose of pesticides is to negate the health effects of famine. Everyone has lost perspective. There are billions of people that need to eat every day.

pgodzin 4y ago

Which fruits and vegetables are low and high in pesticide residue?

symby 4y ago
Organic FV are low in pesticide residue. Conventional FV are high.
- pgodzin 4y ago
  Lot of comments here mention pesticide use in organic FV as well, just not synthetic pesticides. Are there any distinctions within organic and conventional of fruits and vegetables that have low pesticide use regardless of organic or not?
  - lathyrus_long 4y ago
    I've seen fruit marked as "IPM" in my local grocery store. That refers to integrated pest management, a general philosophy of controlling pests through understanding of their physiology, behavior, and interaction with the artificially-managed ecosystem, sometimes using synthetic chemical pesticides but in the smallest quantities that achieve the desired effect. http://ipm.ucanr.edu/ http://ipm.ucanr.edu/ I don't believe use of the term is regulated, though. So in practice that may just be a nicer-sounding synonym for "conventional".
    - ldiracdelta 4y ago
      Unless the farmer is a moron, IPM is how most farmers try to use pesticides. Pesticides and chemical applications can be very expensive. Farmers try to use the least possible amount they can for purely economic reasons. My wife's grandfather was using IPM back in the 70s. Farming is competitive. If your costs are too high, you eventually go bankrupt during bad years. For the most part IPM is the rule, not the exception. Purely limited by the farmer's ability to understand pest cycles.
      - lathyrus_long 4y ago
        A matter of degree, maybe. Certainly there's a degree of understanding that's cheaper than just blind heavy spraying, and that any grower would thus be foolish not to obtain. I've often seen "IPM" used to refer to systems that went beyond that though, incurring higher cost for lower ecological impact. For example, the guidelines linked below note explicitly that > Practices contained in this protocol are considerably more expensive than conventional programs that rely on highly toxic pesticides. https://ipminstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Red-Tomato-Core-Eco-Protocol-2022-v3_1-.pdf https://ipminstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Red-Toma... https://ipminstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Red-Tomato-Eco-Apple-Supplement-2022-v3_2-.pdf https://ipminstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Red-Toma... I think my supermarket apples were just plain "IPM" though, not a specific set of guidelines like that. Those guidelines seem like a tough sell overall, hard to succinctly explain the benefits to the average consumer.
        ldiracdelta 4y ago
        Conventional IPM programs use more toxic, but muuuch less volume of pesticides. Organic programs user "better" pesticides, but much much more. Which is better? We'll, it depends on how fast those pesticides break down and what those degraded molecules are. It depends on how much volume is applied to the produce. It depends on if it accumulates in the flesh of the produce. What if a pesticide outrageously lethal to humans, but breaks down in 2 days and you only apply it in the first 25% of the produce growing window? Which is worse? 400 lbs of feathers accumulating on your chest at 100 lbs/week for 4 weeks or 400 lbs of steel on your chest applied once. Silly metaphor, but the answer to incredibly difficult system problems is really "it depends". Conventional vs organic is not clear cut.

treme 4y ago

ultrasonic washer are by far the best way to wash fruits & veges of these things, in Korea ultrasonic washer-sinks are picking up in popularity. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-JZkiGigDw&t=261s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-JZkiGigDw&t=261s research citation https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4688301/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4688301/

DoingIsLearning 4y ago
Maybe a stupid question but this removes surface pesticide residue, is there any evidence of how much that is percentage wise versus 'absorbed' pesticide inside the fruit?
hetspookjee 4y ago
It makes me sad that we need ultrasonic washers for fruit and vegetables.
- nemo44x 4y ago
  We don’t spray pesticides on fruit to make people sad. Without them then fruit would be inaccessible to many people.
  - tuyiown 4y ago
    > Without them then fruit would be inaccessible to many people. This is just a lucky side effect, I'm 100% sure that main goal is for the pesticides industry just take their cut on the producers margin. By growing those margins, sure, but it's not something that should be forgotten.
    - biorach 4y ago
      No, the main goal of the pesticides industry is to supply chemicals that kill of various pests (insects, fungi etc) that would otherwise destroy a significant proportion of the harvest. Without these pesticides food would be significantly more expensive and less accessible to many people. I agree that we should talk about moving away from chemical dependent farming but we need to be aware of the full picture in order to avoid glib solutions.

Pet_Ant 4y ago

Doesn't say that they controlled for organic fruit (ie low pesticide) being more likely to be chosen by people who are already heath conscious.

JamesBarney 4y ago
And who have more disposable income.
kickout 4y ago
Absolutely nothing about organic production implies less pesticide. Opposite is true actually.
- wlll 4y ago
  I'm curious, can you link to any details of this?
  - kickout 4y ago
    Pesticide use in conventional system can use synthetic chemistries whereas organic can only use 'natural' formulations. Thus, it is extremely difficult to compare apples to apples and most studies are flawed. Because the 'natural' formulation aren't as effective (usually), this needs to higher nominal rates. Again, it's very dicey comparison. I'm not advocating convention > organic, but feel the need to pushback on people that think organic > conventional
  - kickout 4y ago
    This article (if read completely) highlights the extreme lack of data on this subject and mostly does a good job explaining how each metric is 'loaded' (toxicity, nominal application amounts, off-target movements, etc.) This is a very grey subject and it should be debated as such. ETA: link, https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-25502-w https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-25502-w
- toshk 4y ago
  Except a lot of data, and stricter rules See: https://research.wur.nl/en/publications/cocktails-of-pesticide-residues-in-conventional-and-organic-farmi#:~:text=Organic%20soils%20presented%2070%E2%80%9390,soil%20biota%20and%20soil%20health https://research.wur.nl/en/publications/cocktails-of-pestici....

DecentAI 4y ago

Can anyone provide a hopeful development update as to what efforts if any are underway in the farming industry to genuinely move past herbicides and pesticides of this kind?

treme 4y ago
https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2021/11/02/self-driving-farm-robot-uses-lasers-to-kill-100000-weeds-an-hour-saving-land-and-farmers-from-toxic-herbicides/?sh=6106864e4070 https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2021/11/02/self-dr... pew pew
biorach 4y ago
Organic farming exists. Consumers can move past herbicides and pesticides by paying more (sometimes much more) for their food, and cooking more from scratch. Of course this is easy for wealthy first-world dwellers. Less so for low income families in places with less diverse supply chains. Organic farming has lower yields (those pests otherwise killed off by the pesticides end up eating a lot of the produce) and is more labour intensive - which explains the higher cost. Additionally there is more to the picture than farmers and consumers. In most first-world countries the large retailers (Walmart is famously the most ruthless here) mercilessly squeeze suppliers (distributors and large farmers) to supply the most produce at the lowest price. This pushes farms into consolidation and industrial production - i.e. very large scale mono-culture farming heavily dependent on chemicals. The very low cost food that we see in our supermarkets has the effect of making orgainic produce look overpriced by comparison - often consumers these days view organic as a luxury item. Governments too have grant-aided and subsidized farms in a way that often incentivizes "high-tech" farming. I could go on...
- fsflover 4y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_farming#Nutrient_leaching https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_farming#Nutrient_leach... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_farming#Food_quality_and_safety https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_farming#Food_quality_a...
- 4y ago

atty 4y ago

Unless I missed something, it’s completely self reported and only following people working in healthcare. This is not a very convincing result.

minsc_and_boo 4y ago
The cohorts are huge (120,000+ people) and they controlled for a number of other factors in the analysis, so I don't think sample error is here to blame for why they observed high-pesticide fruits/veggies having less health benefits than low-pesticide fruits/veggies.
- lathyrus_long 4y ago
  The p values are small enough that the correlation seems likely to be real, even after lots of dredging through that dataset. I'm less sure about the causality, though. It's also possible they've just discovered that richer people (a) live longer, and (b) like organic produce. They controlled for various factors (note 1 on table 2), but none that seem like usefully strong proxies for income or wealth.
  - minsc_and_boo 4y ago
    The study doesn't seem to claim causality, just that this is their second study showing the same results, and that further study is needed. I'm not sure how controlling for income/wealth would matter, given that the study is all nurses and they control by ethnicity.
    - lathyrus_long 4y ago
      Surely this relationship is noteworthy only to the extent it's potentially a causality? The authors are careful not to make explicit claims, but most discussion here is about that possibility. The title of this HN submission is too ("could negate"), though the title of the paper itself is more cautious. After more carefully reading the paper, I think the premise of my original comment was completely wrong though. The study apparently had no information on whether the participants were eating conventional or organic produce. Rather, they categorized by type of fruit or vegetable, converting the average results of tests for residues to a score from 0 (best) to 6 (worst) with a somewhat arbitrary heuristic. For example, grapefruit scored 0, and spinach scored 6. That eliminates the spurious correlation I speculated about, though others may exist; it would be interesting to know which specific fruits and vegetables accounted for most of the effect. That heuristic also increases the risk of data dredging; I wonder how many versions they tried before they got their result. As to the residues, it seems they considered all pesticides equally, even though some are strongly suspected to be much more dangerous than others. It would be interesting to repeat the analysis considering only residues of those suspected to be most (or least) dangerous, to see if their effect gets bigger (or smaller).

jtdev 4y ago

newsclues 4y ago

I have food allergies and have a very strict diet. Recently I had some issues with dry scalp, doctors weren’t helpful to diagnose the root cause, and I traced it to non organic carrots that removed or replaced by organic ones caused the symptoms to return. I can’t buy cheap bulk carrots, but organic ones are fine. This sounds insane but I’m starting to think the food supply isn’t as safe as we think.

sebleon 4y ago
Very interesting, how did you figure out carrots were the issue?
- newsclues 4y ago
  Substitution. Changed to organic/no carrots, symptoms went away, ate cheap carrots again, boom issues returned.

kaylz 4y ago

This is part of the reason I really want to move out of the U.S. Other countries are much more strict with what they allow in their food. I understand that I can pay more for organic produce and meat, but for a supposedly first-world country, you'd think decent produce would be a given.

nostromo 4y ago
So you'd rather everyone pay more for food based on your personal preferences? Even though there's a lot of evidence that these foods are entirely safe...
- switchbak 4y ago
  He said he wanted to move somewhere else, I don't see where he's trying to force his preferences on others.
- Etheryte 4y ago
  This is a pure strawman argument, the parent comment said none of those things. Regarding entirely safe, this is a comment thread on a study that says they're not entirely safe.
- ceejayoz 4y ago
  > So you'd rather everyone pay more for food based on your personal preferences? The counterpoint here is "so you'd rather everyone pay more for health care decades from now to save a few bucks on groceries now?" > Even though there's a lot of evidence that these foods are entirely safe... The US requirement for a lot of chemicals is "generally recognized as safe", which, in practice, means "we don't know that it's not safe yet". When we find something's unsafe, industry frequently switches to something similar that's still GRAS (because no one's been using it) but likely has the same issues. Europe takes a stricter approach. Example: BPA in plastics, which has now been replaced with BPS and BPF.
- toshk 4y ago
  Except it isn't. Already lots of diseases linked to pesticides. Will only be more in the years to come. It's clear that at least farmers and also people living in pesticides ridden areas suffer many diseases, for instance Parkinson: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6176703/#:~:text=Pesticide%20exposed%20workers%20have%20been,pesticides%20cause%20serious%20health%20hazards https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6176703/#:~:tex.... The only assumption is is that in low doses pesticides are not harmful, but there is no deep knowledge of years and years of low dose pesticide exposure. And those limits might differ based upon weight, gender, age, genetics and luck. But there are also other risks. For instance with Strawberries they might have limits of one pesticide, but they max out different ones, so you get a cocktail of chemicals that used together exceeds the allowed limits of one.

arisAlexis 4y ago

I'm stupid and don't understand high pesticide with low pesticide. So those who eat a lot are good and those who eat a little are not? Also there is a sentence saying that people that don't smoke are more active have lower bmi have hypercholesterolemia. Is something off or I just can't read Sci studied anymore?

MikeDelta 4y ago

I read a while ago about leek that was stolen while it was still toxic from the pesticides. Apparently the leeks needed some more weeks for the toxins to flush through. Haven't been able to find some other info about this process. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/wbna9704486 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/wbna9704486

ac29 4y ago
For leeks to have a white portion of the stem (usually the part that is eaten), you have to bury part of it underground or it turns green. Presumably they use something like a soil fumigant to prevent spoilage of this underground part. Pretty nasty stuff if it actually renders the plant toxic for 6 weeks.

smm11 4y ago

I'm pretty sure wild boar is the best thing out there right now.

dukeofdoom 4y ago

I'm no fan of communism, but one thing I think communism did better is that allotment gardens and and small cottage gardens where much more attainable under communism for poor people. So even poor people could grow their own food. I live in Ontario where the price of real estate is bonkers. If you own land, you can't even build a shed without there being a main building. And you can't build anything under 800 sqft. The high property taxes and real estate prices make it basically unaffordable for most people. I planted a few fruit trees in my backyard, but so far only squirrels benefit.

ceejayoz 4y ago
Germany and Switzerland have allotment gardens today; communism isn't required.
- malfist 4y ago
  In the US we had victory gardens during times of war rationing. I personally grow one still today, but not everyone has the space, time and inclination to learn how to grow plants and preserve a harvest.
  - dukeofdoom 4y ago
    Just curious, what method do you use to protect against squirrels? They're kind of crazy here, will eat everything. I had one chew through a plastic bird feeder to get at the seeds.
    - malfist 4y ago
      I have a fence, and dogs are often in the backyard. Squirrels don't really bother most of what I grow anyway since they're mostly started indoors and transplanted.
  - jabl 4y ago
    I saw some documentary on the TV about the common food people ate in various decades in the UK, and there they said that some time after WWII when rationing was ended people were so dead tired of their victory gardens that most of them were replaced with lawns or flowers in just a few short years.

xyst 4y ago

I can't wait until vertical farming becomes cheap enough to overtake traditional farming methods. Pesticide use will be a thing of the past while all of our food is grown locally in controlled environments. Optimizing for food taste instead of pesticide or weather resistance. Not to mention the reduced carbon footprint (due to transportation), significant decrease in water usage, and increased efficiency.

kickout 4y ago
you think controlled environments don't use chemicals to control pests??? They do, and they use them a lot, because controlling pests and pathogens is physically hard no matter how hard you try. Vertical farming is way, way more energy intensive than regular outdoor based farming for the simple reason is outdoor farming can use the sun. That sole fact basically kills vertical farming for all but the highest of margin food (spices, some vegetables). When we get cheap energy, vertical farming will take off. Not before.
- ClumsyPilot 4y ago
  Controlled environments, are, well, erm, controlled, so something like a hydroponic greenhouse normally wouldn't use pesticides at all - pests should not be getting in at all. If the greenhouse uses normal soil then ofcourse it's not totally isolated, but still i'd expect them to use less
  - kickout 4y ago
    Having spent alot of time in controlled environments, the name is misleading. These are chip making clean facilities. I'd guess >99% of CE facilities have to spray pesticides. Thrips, white flies, and other insects are _very_ common. ETA: to add info for you. CE usually implies the control is from inputs (water, nutrients, light) not physical access.
  - lathyrus_long 4y ago
    I've heard of facilities with short crop cycles (greens, herbs, etc.) running totally bug-free with zero pesticides, with air showers at the entrance and careful segregation so that one introduction doesn't ruin their whole crop, etc. I don't think that's common, though. There's usually bugs. It's common to deliberately introduce predatory insects, which control the pests in the same way as in nature, with the additional benefit that they can't fly away if the pest population gets too low. Chemical pesticides are also widely used, both organic and non-organic. Hydroponic crops are especially vulnerable to sucking pests (aphids, whiteflies, etc.), because of the large amounts of tender new growth. Without controls or natural predators, their population can just explode, much worse than anything you'd get outdoors.

MrYellowP 4y ago

As an Austrian I would never touch the food that comes out of the US. Never. The title alone makes me raise an eyebrow, because from my perspective this isn't just obvious, but well known.

teknopaul 4y ago
The title of this is plain ridiculous. The primary "health benefit" of eating food is that you dont die of hunger. Are all american vegitairians dead ;) Or do people live of meat and petrolchemicals?
fomine3 4y ago
US citizens may eat much foods made in US everyday, but outside US citizens may not. I'll care this if I live US, but I don't much care as a non-US resident, because consumption is low. Amount is important factor.

samatman 4y ago

Anxiety could also negate the health benefits of not eating pesticides.

pfdietz 4y ago

The battle of the putatives.

andai 4y ago

Another fun headline from a while back: jogging near roads negates the benefits of the exercise.

fsckboy 4y ago

how are we supposed to parse this?: "High-pesticide-residue FV intake was unrelated whereas low-pesticide residue FV intake was inversely related to all-cause mortality" high pesticide consumption was unrelated (so had no effect on mortality), while low pesticide intake had inverse relation to mortality (low pesticide = high mortality)?

nikkwong 4y ago
Inversely related to mortality. I.e low pesticide intake reduced morality.
- xenator 4y ago
  I'm still confused. Morality or mortality?
  - kgr 4y ago
    If you eat low-pesticide fruits and vegetables, you're less likely to die. If you eat high-pesticide fruits and vegetables, your chances of dying are unaffected, which is surprising because you would expect that increased fruit and vegetable consumption would decrease your chances of dying. So, it seems that the potential health benefits of eating fruits and vegetables is negated if they contain high levels of pesticide.
DoingIsLearning 4y ago
The expectation is that FV consumption decreases all cause mortality. This agrees with the observation that low-pesticide residue FV intake was inversely related to all-cause mortality. If High-pesticide-residue FV intake was unrelated to all cause mortality it could mean that there is a detrimental effect in High-pesticide-residue FV that offsets the expected benefit of FV.

codeflow2202 4y ago

Combine this article with the other one about contamination of fruits and vegetables in Europe and we have a pretty bad picture of the situation: European citizens have been exposed to a dramatic rise in the frequency and intensity of residues of the most toxic pesticides on fruits and vegetables sold in the EU. This report and its primary conclusion contradict official claims that toxic pesticides use is declining and that food residue levels are under control. This report also exposes a complete failure by Member States and the European Commission to implement EU Regulation and protect consumers. https://www.pan-europe.info/sites/pan-europe.info/files/public/resources/reports/CfSResidueReport.pdf https://www.pan-europe.info/sites/pan-europe.info/files/publ...

fuzzfactor 4y ago

Hot running water is actually quite effective. Some solid and oily toxins are considered technically insoluble in water since so few milligrams will dissolve in a liter. Unlike familiar things that are obviously soluble in grams like salt or sugar. Now the pesticides are developed to be highly toxic in milligram amounts, but the advantage is that there is likely only to be a few milligrams on the farm produce that needs to be washed off. Solubility is a function of solvent temperature and volume, so the hotter and the greater number of liters or gallons, often astronomically more of an "insoluble" material can be taken up into a solvent compared to the very minuscule amount soluble when cold. Naturally thorough flushing and/or repeated rinsing with fresh hot solvent will be more effective than a single bath, since the first bath sees the highest concentration of solute. Which can re-deposit upon evaporation. I'm sure people have not thought it was that bad and have occasionally eaten something like an unwashed grape or strawberry, or even quite a number of them whether focusing much awareness on it or not. Take fruit from that same batch and run it under good amounts of hot water and see if you can taste the difference too. Carefully using an appropriate vegetable brush is a good idea as well.

gameswithgo 4y ago